Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Free Trade Agreements - Killing Jobs and Labor Rights

Last week President Obama broke his campaign commitment and put three free
trade agreements up for a vote in Congress. Business interests, ecstatic
at the prospect, promise they'll bring us jobs. Experience tells us, however,
their promises are worthless.

Nineteen years ago, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was in
Congress, supporters said it too would create jobs and protect labor
rights. Before agreeing to new free trade treaties with Colombia, South
Korea and Panama, Congress should look at the dismal record.

Promise
#1. A typical pro-business study predicted in 1992 that NAFTA would create
130,000 U.S. jobs in two years, double U.S. exports to Mexico, and create
609,000 jobs there. Today Tom Donahue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, repeats the promise, saying the three new treaties also "are
about creating jobs."

According to the
Economic Policy Institute, however, between 1993 and 2004 the U.S. trade
deficit with Mexico ballooned by $107 billion, which cost 1,015,290 U.S. jobs,
123,000 in California. But although those jobs went south, Mexico lost
far more jobs because of the treaty than those relocated from the U.S.

Mexico lost a million jobs just in the first year the treaty took effect.
Because the treaty allowed U.S. grain companies to dump corn in Mexico, 1.3
million farmers lost their livelihood as well. Pork dumping cost another
120,000 jobs. Eliminating its domestic content laws cost the jobs of
thousands of auto parts workers.

Six million people from Mexico came to
live and work in the U.S. as a result of this displacement. The Colombian
FTA has a provision identical to that in NAFTA, which led to the corn dumping,
so those farmers will be uprooted too.

Enrique Athankasiadis, President of Panama's National Agricultural
Organization, says, "We are certain that the FTA will cause great
displacement in the Panamanian agriculture sector, on which 40 percent of our
nation'spopulation depends. We Panamanians do not want to follow the
Mexicans and Central Americans in the flood of immigration to the United
States, where many risk their life trying to be able to make a living,
Forced displacement and immigration describes Mexico's experience under NAFTA,
which is almost identical to the U.S.-Panama FTA."

Obama's FTA
with Korea will cost 159,000 U.S. jobs in seven years, according to EPI,
especially in electronics in the south Bay. In the last decade alone
we've lost 6 million high-wage manufacturing jobs.

Promise #2. Supporters
promised a NAFTA labor side-agreement would protect the right to join unions
and raise wages in Mexico.

Just in the past two years, the Mexican
government fired 44,000 electrical workers to destroy their union, and helped a
giant mining company break a 4-year strike. NAFTA did nothing to prevent
these or other violations of labor rights. Mexican wages have declined
since the treaty took effect, producing more unemployed workers, more
displacement and more forced migration.

This will be the story in Colombia too, where over 2850 trade
unionists have been murdered in the last 25 years. Just three weeks ago,
Isidro Rivera Barrera, an activist in the Colombian oil workers union, was
repairing a washing machine in front of his home in Barrancabermeja when a
gunman jumped off the back of a motorcycle and shot him three times at
point-blank range. The assassination followed a demonstration in which
contract oil workers blocked roads and cut production in Puerto Gaitan for
three days, while their Canadian employer accused them of being "armed
criminals."…

Free trade treaties that throw more workers on the street, undermine
labor rights and lead to forced migration, are political suicide for Democrats
especially. Democratic candidates will need and look for workers' votes next
year. Regardless of promises about a stimulus or a new jobs bill, working
families will not forget how they voted on these job-killing treaties.

The AFL-CIO's toll-free number to contact
Congress about the FTAs? 1-800-718-1008.